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SAN ANTONIO — President Barack Obama's visit to Texas this week didn't include a visit to the Rio Grande Valley, which is hard-pressed with an influx of Central American refugees, including many children.

Criticism about this lack of a visit is misplaced. The administration is trying to put its money where its mouth is, requesting $3.7 billion in additional funding.

A better pursuit, as the president suggested, would be for the Texas delegation — and Gov. Rick Perry — to support this emergency funding and to decline to join the partisan clamor to micromanage the administration's use of it. Additional judges and Border Patrol agents are included, and there will be a shifting of priorities in border enforcement and in how these cases are handled in the immigration bureaucracy.

There is no need to send National Guard units to a border that is already among the most heavily patrolled in the world.

There are broader solutions that the president must address, an opportunity now that he has decided to fix what he can on immigration without Congress. A few principles should guide him.

He should not confine these fixes to deportations — just making them faster and packed with more deterrence. He should make the changes meaningful, focusing on the correct, not the speediest, results. He should better prioritize who is truly deserving of removal — and staying.

Virtually no one among those advocating for undocumented immigrants and for immigration reform is suggesting that everyone who makes it here or is already here should get an automatic pass to stay. But they are saying that these decisions should take into account equities people have built up and whether these should trigger more discretion.

The president's go-it-alone strategy on reform is prompted by inaction in the House on immigration reform that was approved and sent over by the Senate about a year ago.

But the president should let the right crisis be his guide. Backlogs and disparate, unjust treatment made U.S. immigration policy a crisis long before this surge of Central Americans fleeing the violence and poverties of their own countries.

The president could extend to more people his ability to defer enforcement or extend “parole-in-place” already exercised for some.

He should give the same attention — including the right to legally work — to close family members of so-called DREAM Act kids who have already been extended some relief. These protections should also be afforded close family members of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, people who have lived here for a long time and developed strong community ties and business owners or those who are valued by their employers.

And this list should also include people who already have green cards but who are threatened with removal because they committed a crime long ago for which they've already paid or committed a minor crime more recently.

The president should put immigrants who are genuine threats to the community at the top of the removal list but deferring action for those who pose no threat and who would qualify if only Congress would fully approve immigration reform.

The president should remove the constant threat of deportation — and detention — from people who do not deserve to have their families torn apart.